Tottenham came unstuck when they pressed high at the Etihad last season but it was preferable to their timid performance against Manchester City at WembleyTottenham would press them, push high up the pitch, even from goal-kicks. They’d be aggressive and adventurous. They’d stop Manchester City playing out from the back. This would be a proper test of Pep Guardiola’s side. Related: The Pep commandments: how lessons learned at Bayern stymied Liverpool | Jonathan Wilson Related: Pep Guardiola admits he was wrong to call Spurs the ‘Harry Kane team’ Continue reading...
Manchester United seem incapable of doing the thing José Mourinho’s teams are renowned for so the manager must change his approachThere are times when you wonder whether the gods of football have almost too pronounced a sense of irony. Not content with a script that pitted an under-pressure José Mourinho against a series of ghosts of his past (Manuel Pellegrini, Rafa Benítez and Chelsea lining up like the conspirators around Julius Caesar, with Juventus, a club he clashed with repeatedly in Italy and now bolstered by his agent’s most high-profile other client, to come), they have devised a new torment for their plaything: his teams have become incapable of doing the thing he was renowned for getting his teams to...
Manchester United’s trip to face Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea offers a clash of styles on and off the pitch and starts a defining run of matches for Mourinho One reason put forward to explain why the great plague did not just keep on ravaging the human race forever is that it ran out of people to kill. The vulnerable succumbed. Those who were resistant grew stronger. Meanwhile the plague remained the same, stuck in its old plague ways, scowling on the periphery, reduced to the odd destructive burst.There are of course many points of difference between José Mourinho’s approach to winning at football and the bubonic plague. But like the great plague Mourinho’s voracious early success has been followed by a...
Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have both reined in their attacking instincts this season, aware of leaving gaps in defenceIt is all about the full-backs but these days it is always all about the full‑backs. From a tactical point of view Sunday’s meeting between Liverpool and Manchester City is likely to be settled by Trent Alexander-Arnold against Aymeric Laporte and Andy Robertson against Kyle Walker – and, if it is not, it will be because Pep Guardiola has chosen not to take on that fight. Jack Charlton’s observation after the 1994 World Cup that full-back had become the most important position on the pitch seems wiser by the day.Full-backs, Louis van Gaal insists, are the key to Guardiola. The biggest...
Spurs must kick their habit of letting in goals when seemingly in control, starting against Liverpool, at a time when every bad result threatens to undermine their projectTottenham’s 4-1 win at Wembley against Liverpool last October was one of those games that stays in the memory long after the final whistle. It wasn’t just the result, although that of course was part of it.This was a game that brought together a number of strands, in effect ending Spurs’ Wembley hoodoo, laying Liverpool’s defensive limitations so bare that Jürgen Klopp claimed they would have been better off with him at centre-back and cementing Son Heung-min’s status as a crowd favourite. Related: Hugo Lloris will remain as Tottenham captain on return from injury...